I find myself in an interesting position. I am at a job that is relatively stress-free, so stress-free that the slightest bit of stress causes panic and anxiety. Like I had posted earlier this year, the difficulty in finding work when one is of a certain age, like the age I am at now.

Most days it’s quiet, and I try to find things to do or ways to pass the time. I try not to fall into the social media morass to do each day it’s a sweet sticky trap.

And I am working, and I am happy to be working. Each morning I wake up, I remind myself of how easy this job is and how worthwhile it is to get out of bed and have a job that I like to go to. It is certainly preferable to not working.

I show up, I do my routine for 7 hours, and head out; it’s not so bad at all. So it’s Friday, and the Friday before Thanksgiving. Things are winding down oh so slowly, like the hours in a day. Bill is off on another road trip with some cadets to Syracuse and is expected back on Saturday
evening.

Mike is coming over tonight and, more than likely, leaving on Sunday. Bill and I are seeing a play on Sunday afternoon that a friend of his wrote, and I was going to invite Mike, but he was unavailable, so the invitation went unsaid and unheard.

I just gave a weather report to Mike, basically saying it was cooler and humid than I had to explain what that meant. Barely a bone in the skeleton crew today at the fruit stand, which is fine. Like I wrote yesterday, time crawls and it’s crawling along today, which means next week is going to be even slower.

There’s a West Indian contracted worker in the office at the moment, so when I’m at my desk, I’m playing Gregory Isaacs, which might make him happy, or might make him think, ‘Why is this guy playing music that my grandparents used to listen to?’

Who knows? I’ll let you know, though

One of the things I had to do the past couple of days was oversee a camera at another fruit stand that’s a half a mile away from me. It worked on Monday, it worked on Tuesday, it stopped working on Wednesday, and not at all on Thursday. It was reported to the powers that be, and it was determined that the problem lay on their side, not on mine.

As I set at my desk eating some excellent halal food that I had to go out of my way to get but it was definitely worth it since it was definitely very good I got a phone call on the device I answered it and it seems that the camera that I was supposed to use to overlook is working again just in time to be shut off for the weekend.

Now this fruit stand will be dead to the world next week, but still, they want me to check the camera to oversee the fruit stand, and I have no choice but to
accommodate their wishes.
Mike is coming over tonight’s I’m supposed to call him when I get to Hoboken so he can arrange for a Lyft to take him from 62 Jewett Street to the crib in Hoboken.

Xavier Boys high school

The PATH train was crazy crowded this morning. Because of a New Jersey Transit fiasco, their trains were diverted to Hoboken, and all those commuters had to go somewhere.

That was dictated. That’s as far as my dictation got. I was not present for most of the day as it crawled past me.

Yesterday was most of the same except for leaving with Jimmy Chile at 3:45 PM to go to a small Thanksgiving celebration at the main fruit stand. I was initially wary about going and spending time with Yancey, which certainly meant that I did not want to spend any more time with him if I could help it.

The women, Kimberly and Anise, who trained me, were understanding and expressed some disappointment when they knew I was not going to show up. That was the deciding factor for me. I walked up with Jimmy Chile after I convinced him I would rather walk. He’s a fast walker, and once or twice I had to let him know to slow down.

It reminded me of when I used to walk around with Rita, who was constantly getting me to slow down since I was walking too fast. Now I am Rita, complaining about my companion walking too fast for my aged legs.

Today was slow, especially when compared to walking. A few years ago, an old friend, Denise, saw me walking on the street and asked why I was walking so slowly. I didn’t think I was, but years later, her words echo in my ears. I am very conscious, perhaps too conscious, of the speed of my gait.

I see younger people flying past me as I walk and try to keep up. I still wind up sweating like a horse. And yesterday afternoon, the younger person was Jimmy Chile.

Today, Jimmy was all over the place, but he always found time to check up on me. Marcus is not in the office, working from home, I think. And since the holiday season is creeping up, things are not as busy as they usually are.

I suppose it will be like this until January. I really don’t know since I wasn’t working at the fruit stand this time last year. I’m not complaining. I just have to show up. Leaving the festivities last night, I rode the elevator with a guy who was leaving the fruit stand until December. He has off. I mentioned that I’m a contract player, so I will be in.

He suggested getting a good book, and I told him I was reading ‘Let The Stories Be Told’, the biography of that Boston band, The Cars. He mentioned that all he had were baby books. As we exited the elevator, I asked if he was able to understand those books. Cheeky.

It’s a good book, entertaining. I really liked The Cars’ first album. I bought it soon after it came out. One summer day in 1978, I rode my bike to Maywood for a haircut. I saw in the paper, The Cars were doing an in-store appearance at EJ Korvettes, a mile or two up the road.

I had nothing to do and nowhere to go, and after my haircut, I rode to Paramus. There they were, all five of them, signing albums. I already had the album and did ot have the money to buy a new one, so I snagged a brown paper shopping bag, which they signed before heading out to their limo.

That first album is a classic. Almost every track is a hit. There were always at least one or two interesting tracks on their following albums.